


Breaking New Ground

by PerdixWrites



Series: Breaking New Ground [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-14 11:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21015203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerdixWrites/pseuds/PerdixWrites
Summary: A teenage boy leaves home to become the youngest inter-planetary pioneer of his civilisation after being rejected from the official government training programme.  Set in the distant future on a terraform-in-progress planet, the boy’s journey takes him from the planet’s depths, to the atmosphere’s limits, picking up a rag-tag band of friends and new skills along the way, that help him on the way to the stars. Once a lifetime, the planet launches a new ‘seed pod’ that lands and blooms into a powerful life supporting tech-tree that stretches into the ground, and up into the sky. Will our protagonist be on the next one, to reach start a new life and break new ground?





	1. Breaking New Ground #1 – 0101. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking new Ground - Prologue. Where it began.

Breaking New Ground #1 – Prologue

Nature has been the catalyst for many of Humankind’s pivotal advancements; either by creating the conditions that required adaptation, or providing cataclysm avoiding solutions. Often both.

In the earliest days, the whipping winds and dark days were made tolerable once fire bloomed, later, coal scarcities were supplemented and replaced with the limitless wind, solar and hydro sources in the boom of the energy era. Humankind’s harking back to its origin, a literal return to its roots, for either inspiration or protection, has always been fruitful. It should come as no surprise then, that when the civilisation was faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge, nature had an answer. A method that had been tried and tested for millennia.

To be an effective ecosystem, an equilibrium needs to be maintained, a balance in which no one entity takes more than it gives, else the system would collapse, and the parasite would be forced to move on. Unfortunately, the Human species is exactly that, and whilst Earth’s ecosystem has strained to support these plunderers of natural bounty, a limit was reached. It was time for Humans to break new ground, it was time to reach beyond Earth.

The early days of space faring colonial life was extraordinarily tough. Long dark decades of constant vigilance took a heavy mental and physical toll. Relentless toil on barren land with the same crew of terraformers made for slow, tortuous progress. As many colonies failed from crew’s breaking down as they did from mechanical failures. One brief lapse in judgement, or a unsealed door, and entire crews would die in a near instant. Progress was being made, but it was much too slow, and whilst new colonies were continually being established, only 1 in every 200 was self-sufficient. Humans, it seemed, would not progress to becoming an interplanetary species.

It was whilst tending to a small greenhouse garden, child’s play compared to the challenges faced by colonies, that an idea took root within the mind of one of Earth’s terraforming engineers. This idea, presented to the community for nurturing, germinated into a proof of concept and eventually bloomed into an actual viable mission. The idea came from the fact that plants and trees constantly venture into relatively unknown territories to spread their progeny. They did this via seeds. The seed is nature’s perfect early colony, containing everything the plant will need to become an established entity of its own. It’s a self-sufficient unit, a green bullet in an arid-brown landscape. Seeds spread forth from plants in their millions and whilst some, most, go on to become nothing, others thrive to start the cycle anew.

The technical suggestions made by the engineer weren’t too dissimilar from the current method of colonisation. The seeds would carry a cryogenically frozen crew, along with all the genetic material to create a diverse colony, energy sources of all types, oxygen, and patchwork composite building materials necessary to establish a base of operations.

Some slight differences were suggested. Rather than a surface landing module, the delivery rocket needed to be more spear-like, with the intent to burrow down into the planet’s mantel. This had the benefit of saving colonists a lot of the early mining work required for sourcing water and building the radiation proof subterranean habitats. A solution was found to negate the impact felt by the crew that also stored the kinetic energy for later use. The second difference suggested was automation, with robotic roots burrowing from the seed for many kilometres above and below the surface, collecting data, solar power, and any available water.

Undoubtedly, phenomenal technological advances were made in the process of building the first seed, but it was the psychological reorientation of the colonising process that had the most profound effect. It was the acceptance of two principles: first, that most seeds would fail, and second, that people would never visit these colonies.

The first point came after the acceptance that too many resources were spent trying to encourage colonies that couldn’t not survive. As colonists stepped into the pods it was with the understanding that their lives as they knew them were over. They would never see their friends and family again, and would most likely never wake up from being frozen. For many, the opportunity to be an early pioneer far outweighed this heartache.

The second point was the other side of that same coin. Not only would colonists never see Earth again, but perhaps more importantly, nobody from Earth would ever see the colonies. Until now, it was the unspoken expectation that these colonies would facilitate an intergalactic network that humans could travel. The side effect of this was a psychological and physical reliance on Earth for words of encouragement and supplies, hindering self-sufficiency.

Albeit a harsh reality, these two principles vastly broadened Humankind’s scope for colonisation, in terms of both space and time. Spatially, there were no limits, no radio contact windows to consider or re-supply trajectories to account for. If they could aim for it, they could colonise it. Temporally, there was now no deadline, just a continued firing of seeds out into blackness of space, with the rest left up to them. Eventually of course, it was hoped that Earth would hear from the successful colonies, but none of those who saw the seeds leave would hear such reports, the time frame was now millennia, not centuries.

For the seeds themselves, their primary purpose was to produce their own seeds and send them off to suitable targets. The hope was to spread exponentially across the galaxy, like a network of ivy that creates anchor points whilst climbing a wall, hopping from planet to planet. The life cycle of each colony, whilst each unique due to the unanticipated environment, went consistently as follows:

Arrival. The seed would shoot into the ground, and robotic roots would weave through the planet’s surface to collect water, environmental data, raw physical material, and solar power.  
Germination. The first colonists would be revived and live inside the seed, constructing a stem that pushed through the ground and produce leaf like solar panels and atmosphere generators.  
Growth. The structure would be bolstered, reaching further into the sky and deeper underground. The roots would spread wider and the stem would firm to have a radius of a few kilometres. Reproduction would begin as in incubators facilitated the birth of new colonists.  
Habitation. The roots would expand and solidify to create a vast network of underground tunnels whilst many hundreds of leafs relentless absorbed energy and pumped out oxygen. The stem would reach into the clouds and Humans would move to live on the surface, in the tunnels and on the leaves.  
Blooming. The planet would continue to be terraformed, as the plant grew larger and stretched into the upper atmosphere. Other smaller plants would be established to support the process. The civilisation worked towards the production of the next seed, which would be fired from the middle atmosphere at their closest planetary neighbour.  
The time frame for each stage varied wildly planet to planet, and was dependant on available resources, but with a few exceptions, successful seeds always grew in a similar fashion, resulting in some of the largest superstructures ever conceived. A terraforming power house, a tree of life that had roots reaching into the bowls of virgin planets up to the cold edges of the freshly created atmosphere. Stretching for thousands of kilometres and supporting millions of lives. Each planet had its own unique and diverse culture, its own visionaries, artists, scientists, heroes and villains.

This is the story of one of those colonies.


	2. Breaking New Ground #2 – 0102. Looking Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking New Ground - Part Two. Meet our hero as he begins his journey.

Like the persistent creeping of swelling waves approaching high tide, apprehension grew in Alex Wright. As he sat listening to the familiar cautionary tales of early human colonies, the stories of the great storm in their 5th year, the collapse of south-tree in their 40th etc. he couldn’t help but be distracted by the hot knotting of dread that grew in his throat. He’d endured for too long and was subsumed by impotent embarrassment when his teacher finally read aloud the next chapter, “Family Lineage”, and 30 pairs of eyes turned to look at him.

Building a population on a fresh new world relies heavily on a library of gene samples and large vats of an amniotic concoction that are called concubators. Simply described, concubators automate the conception, gestation and birth of humans in a carefully controlled environment at a carefully controlled rate. Its said to have many advantages, but the main one is the ability to artificially adapt an entire generation upon arrival to a new planet with an unknown environment. Its social effects are less well known, but the reliance on this system does put a great focus on how well gene combinations thrive so that the best variety could then be re-sampled when the time comes to colonise elsewhere. After all, they wouldn’t want to waste limited resources maintaining weak lineages.

Preemptively, Alex had decided to physically separate himself, by attending class remotely. Instead, he sat in his living room wearing an AirHead helmet. Everybody had one, they enabled VR communication, entertainment, oxygen delivery, toxin filtration, flight navigation and plenty more as standard. Life without them was impossible. They were also intensely personalised with ever more imaginative paint jobs, re-designs, moving and materialising parts; they were seen as an extension of oneself, more so than a person’s actual face because most people interacted with their helmets on. Only families would recognise each other’s faces.

Alex’s AirHead was mottled brown and orange and shaped like an eagle, pointy and narrow with feather like panels sweeping backwards. Beneath it, looking into the classroom projected onto his visor, he flushed a deep magenta as hot embarrassment refused to surrender him. He was however spared from giving anyone else the pleasure of knowing his agitation, by having the forethought to set his own holographic representation to show a steadfast ‘neutral’ face. This projection, called a perspro, was not to deviate from its default recorded setting of simply showing Alex’s listening face. At least his discomfiture was secret.

It stemmed from a publicly well known fact. Alex Wright was one of the few kids on his planet to come from a family lineage that began the old-fashioned way. One man with one woman with no fancy gene selection and a mountain of shame. The fact that this started well over 10 generations ago with the very pioneers that gave rise to the planet’s civilization didn’t matter at all. If anything, it made it worse, ‘they should have known better’ apparently. It used to be deemed a great honour, children of passion heralded to be great artists or leaders, but now the threat of resource scarcity shifted perception and such families are thought of as reckless and unstable. In no small part because it was thought that non-selective birth carried a higher risk of undesirable physical traits or defects.

Alex had heard all of this before and though he’d never had these thoughts or feelings hurled at him, it was discussed matter-of-factly, lineage superiority was so well institutionalised that he struggled to distinguish it from a fact of reality itself.

The teacher drew the lesson to a close, saying

“Class, for those of you wanting to be considered for the pioneer’s programme next year, you need to submit your cover letter by midnight tonight”, she looked at Alex’s perspro “Be warned though, it’s not for the faint-hearted”

The class timer buzzed and without concern for self-decapitation, Alex tore off his AirHead and threw it on the sofa as it folded down to a more compact size. His embarrassment was supplanted with anger. “’faint-hearted!’, how dare she!”. She’d delivered surreptitious abuse by hinting at a physical ineptitude in her faux-warning. It rang around Alex’s head, clearly translated to “You’re not to apply for the programme”.

Alex collapsed onto his bed deflated. He reached for a pair of gloves that lit up as he put them on, flexed his fingers and selected ‘guitar’ by twisting a black dial on the back of them. He started to absently pluck through a soft blues melody, letting his eyes rest, only taking in sound. He opened them and resisted the urge to focus on anything and instead continued to stare through his bedroom skylight into a cold white-blue sky. It looked like morning but at this altitude the sky was always thin and pale. Just as his eyes began to focus on an orphaned cirrus strand, Alex was spared the effort, as the vista was utterly overwhelmed by a larger cloud that engulfed his house.

“I didn’t want to apply anyway, but now it looks like I’m scared!” he burst out loud as his musical notes faltered. He wondered again why his family were so set on maintaining the practice of so called ‘natural birth’, but remembered the endless arguments he’d had and the ‘tradition’/‘our right’/ ‘nature vs. nurture’ speeches he’d been the unwilling audience of. 

Alex lived high on one of his planet’s many terraforming trees. His family weren’t trusted with much responsibility, but they were comfortable enough in the middle of the main canopy, looking after the oval of black glass and metal assigned to them.

Alex came from a family of energy collectors, in fact Alex came from the planet’s very first energy collectors, to his dismay. It was difficult work that comprised of the near continual cleaning of the solar panel’s black glass to help the family adhere to their strict absorption quotas. It was their job to bring in as much light energy as possible to serve as fuel for everyone else. His Dad was excellent at it and his younger brother was showing similar promise.

With the view gone, there was nothing to distract Alex’s thoughts from his classroom humiliation. He threw off his gloves and left his bedroom without purpose. The main room of the house was a wide and flat oval shape, with a low curved ceiling, and a floor that stepped down into a seating area. At the tip of the leaf-like structure, on the wall opposite where the 3 bedrooms were, was a panoramic window that usually boasted an endless blue view, sliced by a thin orange line that betrayed the planet’s curve. However, currently, it was a grey fog.

Alex walked towards the panoramic window and tapped the panel on the wall. It buzzed back in refute. Alex jumped back over to the sofa, pulled on his AirHead, and tapped the panel again, this time it gave an affirmative beep and glowed amber. A slight judder ran through the house, and a balcony slid out from under the floor, cutting into the surrounding cloud. A clip from Alex’s belt automatically shot out and hooked onto a pole that ran from floor to ceiling, and out onto the balcony. With that, the door slid open.

A cacophony of wind and an eruption of moisture filled the living room. He stepped tentatively onto the platform which was still moving and had its outline flashing in orange on his HUD. Alex was instantly drenched with near frozen water as various warnings popped up violently on his visor. He edged his way closer to the platform’s precipice using the amber LEDs to guide him, but as he got closer, the cloud suddenly cleared and the blistering abyss fell beneath him exposing the planet’s surface many miles away. He scrambled frantically back falling to his hands and knees to feel the secure metal beneath him. He was used to being this high, he just wasn’t used to seeing the huge falling potential presented so suddenly or so raw. He laid on his back with a tight grip on his tether to help regain composure. Strangely, looking up at the infinite sky and space beyond it, didn’t seem as intimidating as the finite below. 

Alex noticed, high above, on one of the newly built upper canopies, two black streams were careening through the sky, punching holes in the juvenile clouds that were condensing around the intruding metal and plastic. They were making a deliberate motion towards this leaf. A slight concern took hold in the back of his mind, but he waited for a closer look.

Picking up speed the shapes came closer, and whilst Alex recognised his Mother’s AirHead she was accompanied by someone unfamiliar. The two landed on the balcony which clearly functioned more of a landing pad for these sorts of journeys than an observational deck, and sent a slight shudder through the leaf. They wore very similar clothes, black flight cloaks with shimmering purple hexagons on the inner lining and black altitude boots. Their AirHeads were very different though. His Mother’s was the familiar purple and lilac streamlined teardrop, whilst the other was alien to Alex, a smooth oval with a bright orange half-moon under the chin.

Alex’s visor lit up with a video conference as his Mother came to hug him.

“I’ve only gone and smashed it”, said a boy’s voice, it was his younger brother.

“What the hell! How have you got a flight suit, you’ve not managed to pass?!” Alex said in disbelief, grabbing his brother’s hand in congratulation.

“Yep! Just got the skill you know, bit of talent, takes a proper man you see, designed it too, proper cool isn’t it!?” he boasted, knowing Alex was envious

“Youngest person to pass the flight test ever apparently! We had to celebrate and get his first gear straight away”, his Mother chimed in proudly.

“Damn, I need to get mine sorted now, no excuses!” Alex said.

They walked inside and with a re-pressurised hiss the leaf’s windows sealed out an intense amount of wind noise, and the balcony retracted. They took off their AirHeads to reveal their faces. His brother, almost as broad as he was tall, with a round bald head and orange chin beard and his Mother, small, slightly hunched, pale with short inky black hair, beamed with pride. It was a true rite of passage to get your flight licence and meant the endless hours of travelling via public Beltcable routes were no more, a freedom Alex was close to achieving himself.

“So glad I’ve managed to get it done now. Alex you need to get it sorted, it’s about this time of year that dust cloud comes back and you’ll not be able to do your lessons if it hits soon” His brother warned, reminding Alex of the mighty dust cloud that encircles the planet wreaking havoc in its path.

It was caused by the arrival of the very first seed pod thundering into some very loose ground and caused it to flare high into the atmosphere, clump together with the moisture clouds and then gather momentum as the wind pushed it around the planet, passing back over the terraforming trees once a year or so, effectively shutting them down for a month.

“Alex, can you make some tea whilst I check the quotas please?” his Mother asked rhetorically.

“How was it then?” Alex asked his brother whilst moving to the kitchen to scroll through the tea options.

“So damn good, I had two minor fails; using my hands to slow descent rather than cutting the boots earlier and deactivating the AirHead before I’d come to a complete stop. That could have been a major but they let me off because most people do it to look cool when the arrive back on the starting pad, which it does” his brother relayed an only slightly rehearsed retelling of his test, presumably told not long since to their Mother.

Alex laughed whilst making three different coloured teas, “no Jack I mean what was the first unassisted flight like on the way back?”

“Oh legit! Like you’ve no idea. So freeing, so quick, but to be fair it is damn scary” he said excitedly

“He was running flips and tricks straight away, nearly got his flight cape tangled up, scared me half to death” their Mother interrupted without turning away from a large screen of numbers and graphs.

The landing pad warning lights flashed and began to extend of its own accord.

Again, without turning away from the work, “That’ll be your Dad, I’d put the cape in your room Jack as he might not be best pleased we upgraded you, we don’t have much energy to spare to be completely honest”, and she gave a laugh that sounded only slightly nervous. “And Alex, do me a favour and shift those tools off of the side will you?”

Both Alex and Jack did as they were asked and even though they didn’t see it, they felt their Dad’s arrival as he thudded into the leaf sending ripples through the structure. Everybody replied to this familiar sound with loud greetings of their own from wherever they were in the leaf.

“All this shouting but nobody’s come to greet me” their Dad complained, half jokingly.

“I was coming down now” Alex protested

“You’re home early” he said prying slightly

“Yeah I VR’d in today, only had a few lessons so wasn’t worth the journey” Alex lied, knowing his Dad had no idea about his lesson structure.

“We’re down a couple of units vs. forecast” their Mother said, accompanying the news with a dry peck on the cheek.

“Shit I’ll go back out now shall I?” the Dad replied sarcastically

“Yeah could you?” the Mother retorted with the attitude dialled up further.

“Bloody hell, crack that whip why don’t you”, he said with an air of self-pity, kicking off the altitude boots and slumping down onto the sofa.

Alex’s Dad was about his height, shorter than Jack, but about as wide. He had enormous shoulders which gave his frame a very square shape, emphasised by two thick but short legs. Alex’s Dad shared his name with his youngest son, but unfortunately for Jack, also his hairline. Their Dad however hadn’t felt the need to balance it with a beard and instead had a permanent ruddy tan across the bottom of his face from where he’d occasionally need to open up his helmet for a closer, unmediated, inspection of his work on the leaf.

“What’s with the threads?” Alex asked, noticing a new flight suit. It seemed everybody was treating themselves.

“Got to look the part son! Latest flight suit, retractable sail and half price on these tuned up altitude boots. Also took the Airhead v2 for an upgrade and re-sprayed it ‘gun metal grey’” he boasted. Alex was surprised, having just heard about their insufficient quota for the month that his Dad would spend so frivolously.

“Looks good, I heard those boots or crazy expensive, supposed to be twice as powerful as the previous version, two canopies in a blast I read”, Alex was fishing slightly

“Yeah no, I got a deal on these, plus, speculate to accumulate son”, his Dad replied shrewdly, mitigating against Alex’s implied questioning.

“Yeah sure, assuming we can speculate” Alex said trying to adopt an air of indifference but betraying his intent with specificity

“Alright, don’t need you to tell me how to manage energy quotas, who are you like, Apollo?”

Alex laughed it off half nervously, “Anyway, suppose you heard about Jack?”, Alex tactfully changed the subject before he irritated his Dad beyond redemption.

“No, what?”

“Jack!”, Alex shouted, not wanting to give away the surprise, but also creating a bit of suspense that would have both Jack’s assume the worse and get Alex out of the firing line.

“Passed the flight test today” Jack said as he came back into the room

“Excellent, well done son. We’ll have to make sure we get you a good flight suit then so you stay practiced. Important to get out there as soon as possible”, he was genuinely pleased if a little subdued, Alex felt like the praise wasn’t without a trace of disappointment that his eldest had yet to achieve his flight suit.

In an effort to regain some favour by comparison, Alex blurted out.

“Well that’s sorted he’s got a new flight cape already”, his brother Jack looked openly incredulous at this, tutting and raising his hands palms up to ask ‘what the hell’. Alex immediately felt bad compounded by a stern eye from his Mother. He didn’t mean to bring her into it too.

“Well what do you need me for then, hope you got a decent one” his Dad said and fell silent.

A few hours went by as his family pottered about their leaf, tidying, chatting and watching things on their AirHeads, trying to forget about the day. Jack Snr borrowed Alex’s Mittar, his guitar gloves, for a while and played similar melodies to what Alex performed earlier. They remained mostly individual, but before it was time to eat they came together to prepare their gear for the next morning. It was an efficient ritual undertaken by all families in their own way but always consisted of checking each other’s equipment for safety and maintenance. The most important part of this process was the distribution of the week’s energy supply. Every flight suit, AirHead, Altboot and belt cable, everything worked off of the same energy supply. It’s what civilization ran on.

On the wall beneath the screen of orange and black numbers and graphs were 4 circular recesses roughly 6 centimeters in diameter. Their father tapped the screen and brought up an image of a battery, it was filled with a yellow light, animated to look like liquid, and was just short of filling the battery to the top. Alex, Jack and Claire took out small canisters about 15 centimeters in length from their equipment and slotted them the holes beneath the screen.

Jack Snr then tapped a few numbers on screen and as he did so, their canisters glowed from a dim pale yellow to a vibrant blistering orange, humming with intensity. They filled whilst the battery on screen drained. Only Jack Snr’s canister was bright before it was filled and only took a second to top up, which was met with a look from Claire that Alex struggled to recognise.

Sitting at the table, the Wrights had an unrestricted view of almost all of the eastern hemisphere. They were so high up that despite it being nearly pitch dark on the surface at the base of the tree, the planet’s size and curvature meant that for them, it was still dusk. The distant star glowed yellow, dirtied by the encroaching dust storm simmering just beyond the horizon, yet for all the toil and pain it brought at least it made for gorgeous sunsets.

The two brothers sat along one edge whilst the parents seated themselves as sentries at the head of the table. They ate with sparse conversation but occasionally broke into debate or discussion about things that happened during their day. Alex raised his own topic, hoping to find a productive forum here:

“One of my teachers today made a dig at me saying I shouldn’t apply for the pioneers’ programme” Alex floated the topic to the room

“Yeah screw that, why get blasted off and have a massively difficult life when you can enjoy yourself here” Jack’s opinion was clear.

“Because it’s a huge opportunity, you get paid loads even just for training” Alex said unconvinced by even his own argument

“Yeah but you can’t take that money with you. And I mean like, actually, you can’t, there’s nothing to spend it on” Jack’s logic was undeniable, the money was a pointless incentive.

“I guess, it’s also a great honour, a chance to be part of something huge” Alex tried a different, less tangible benefit to convince his audience, Jack barely dignified it with a response and just said “yeah, a chance”.

“Do you want to apply?” Alex’s Mother said,

“Don’t know really, it’s that or the photosynth training.” Alex said

“Nothing wrong with that”, his Dad cut in

“Nobody said there was” his Mother said, preemptively defending Alex

“Yeah that’s fine, I was just talking about it that’s all” Alex said, he was particularly defensive because he knew he did a bad job of hiding his disdain for the work of his family. He wasn’t ashamed by it nor did he think it was beneath him, it just didn’t excite him at all and he’d helped his Dad out enough to know it wasn’t for him.

“Well”, his Dad said, making everyone slightly nervous for what might follow, “If you want to do it, you’ll pass. If not, you practically know how to be a Photosynth anyway so you can fall back on that”.

It was a breath of crisp cool air for Alex, his father’s support was infrequently explicit but was steadfast if given. Despite being brought up as a hypothetical that statement set it in stone. His apprehension, systematically instilled him in, gave way to a resolute ambition, he was going to apply.

“Cheers, I’ll do it after dinner” he said, remembering the deadline was tonight.

The conversation meandered again, but was interrupted as the landing pad began to slide out without a the usual warning sounds, almost disappearing into the darkening sky. Jack Sr glanced over at the panel, presumably to see who’d activated it, and then stood up with unusual vigour for somebody mid-meal. Without wearing his flight suit, Jack activated his AirHead to take form around his head, and as it did, he stepped out onto the platform.

The family watched as Jack had a fairly brief, but animated discussion with a grey caped, grey helmeted man. Their peripheral vision strained to deliver the details of their meeting, but surprise forced Jack Jr, Alex and their Mother Claire to give up disguising their espionage when they saw the two men remove their helmets to talk face to face.

“Shit! He’ll choke!, I didn’t know you could even take the helmets off!” Jack shouted, voicing the thoughts they all shared, but knew full well that his Dad liked to tinker with the technology.

“Well, some models can be upgraded as such, and can be required in some lines of work”, Claire said matter-of-factly, trying to legitimise their Dad’s behaviour

“He’ll freeze first” Alex said

Their helmets were back on as quickly as they took them off, leaving Alex with only a very brief glimpse of the man in the failing light, he looked aged with a grey white goatee. They returned to their food as Jack Sr re-entered the leaf and headed over to the panel, he pressed a few buttons and dials, then sat back at the table.

“Anyone we know?” Jack jr asked, Alex was grateful for his lack of tact here.

“Just work son”, Sr replied, which caused Claire to betray the most subtle of eye rolls.

As if answering a cue that the family weren’t privy to, the warning light control pad changed to a bright cerulean accompanied by a tinny voice of a digital assistant announcing a police override.

They all spoke over reach other confusingly only to be forced into silence by Jack’s agitated voice.

“They’re just here to ask some questions, I might have to go with them but it’ll be fine. Just carry on as normal, if I do go I’ll be back tomorrow”. He stood and gave Claire a peck on the forehead. “Boys, listen to your Mother”, and headed into the bedroom to get changed. The last line made Alex feel uneasy.

The platform rapidly extended, quicker than it had before, as if trying to catch a falling target. With a thunderous landing, 3 black plumes sent an unwelcome shudder throughout the house and stood slowly to a great height of at least 7 foot from the sole of their altitude boot to the tips of their domed AirHead helmets. They were dipped complete in black presumably for the most efficient level of energy absorption and had long cloaks that exaggerated their grandeur whilst also giving them a spectral quality. Their helmets completely covered their heads and faces had no semblance of facial features, causing a surreal depersonalisation by design.

An automated voice pierced through the house.

“Mr Jack Wright, please step out of the house onto the platform with your flight suit and suitable headgear on”.

There was no movement from the bedroom. Rather than repeat themselves, they simply walked towards the door as the same automated voice explained “Entry permitted under warrant 781002, doors opening in 10, 9, 8”. This gave Jack Jr, Alex and their Mother, enough time to grab their headgear to protect against the rush of thin breathless air.

3,2,1”. They stepped into the house as the door acquiesced to their authority. They brought in with them a bitter cold and deafening roar of night air, only emphasising their ghostly imposition.

Jack Sr stepped out of the master bedroom with his headgear on.

“You utter ba…” Jack began, but before he had the satisfaction of resistance, all their visors went back, and silent.

Dim red text then came into view on screen that read “Civilian dis-rest in progress, operators are quelling the situation, please remain calm. If you are under arrest, please confirm your understanding of the following rights …”

Alex made a futile attempt to exit out of the lock-down, shout to his family and remove the helmet. He was given a swift knock to the shin for his efforts, which could have come from either the enforcers or his blind stumbling. Either way, he decided the best thing to do would be to sit down and avoid further injury.

After a minute and a half, which stretched out endlessly in his black digital cell, Alex’s senses were restored. He looked around in a panic seeing his brother and Mother, but not his Dad. He spun to look at the landing pad and glimpsed the figures as they melted away into the midnight blue with the weight of his Dad strung up by cables and distributed between them, wholly arrested. Struggling to stay composed as a wave of adrenaline crashed over him Alex sat looking down through the circular trap door that made the central feature of their living room, the only other exit from the leaf that wasn’t the landing pad and around which the sofa curled. He wasn’t sure he could see them anymore, but that didn’t stop him staring. He spoke quickly with his Mother and brother.

“Why though, there’s not much they could have arrested him for, what cause? You can’t arrest someone for not meeting energy quotas, he doesn’t control the light? And taking him away from the work isn’t going to help matters is it? Just make it worse?”

Claire and Jack were trying to interrupt Alex’s stream of consciousness, but were rebuffed by its pace.

“Who was that old guy, what did he have to do with it, he arrived only just before. Dad then went over to the panel actually, let’s check out what he was looking at”.

“Alex, calm down, he’ll be back tomorrow I’m sure it will be sorted”

Alex fiddled with the panel but his cursory investigation was fruitless, he huffed.

“If Dad knew they were coming he’d obviously close it all down Alex” Jack said insightfully, he was taking this well.

“The old guy will know, I’m sure I can find him on the census database and then I’ll head out to ask him” Alex began muttering

“Alex there’s no point rushing after them, he’ll be in a cell this evening” his Mother called after him as he rushed around for his helmet, “I need you both here to help meet the energy quotas”. This spurred Alex on all the more.

“Yeah bro, Dad said to do as Mother says, we’ve got to keep everything going” Jack added.

Alex wasn’t sure if he was being pulled to help his Dad, or pushed away from the responsibility trap of helping maintain energy levels, but he was set on heading out. He sat on the sofa edge, unable to sit still.

“Okay look, I’m going to find out what’s happening, you guys sit here if you want but I’m going” Alex said, regretting his phrasing but unable to take it back.

Alex stood up, closed his visor and dived headfirst through the living room’s trap door, his belt cable automatically hooked to the guide pole as he did so, catching his weight as he sank through the floor, disappearing.

Alex slid down a intricate network of magnetically connected poles cable work, occupied by only a few other travellers at this time of night. It looked incredibly precarious as he balletically navigated a web clinging to the underside of hundreds of leaves, miles above the ground, spinning and whirling around overlapping branches of poles. He reached the tree’s main trunk, a few hundred meters away from the leaf, and paused. Searching the database for a man in their locale that bore any resemblance to the evening’s earlier stranger. Alex’s heads up display, brought up face after face faster and faster. Alex muted a call from his Mother, and then again from his brother.

Bingo, he had a match, and it wasn’t far, he looked down, and a red dot highlighted the destination, with a marker and route. He’ll be there in half an hour, sooner if he rushed. He kicked the trunk of the tree with a violence so strong it looked as though he wanted to bring the whole thing crashing down, and shot like a dart towards the red marker that flashed brightly against the black sky, “ETA: Twenty minutes past Midnight”.


	3. Breaking New Ground #3 – 0103. Looking Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking New Ground - Part Three. Following a lead, Alex finds a new power.

His long and winding journey towards the leaf-house initially caused a lull of energy and excitement in Alex, crashing his adrenaline high. Despite living high on the tree, the trunk was still close to half a kilometer in diameter and although that’s much thinner than at the base, the juvenile cables were an inefficient way to travel. Once you’d hooked in, they guided you between the clipping stations, carrying you as a passive passenger, leaving you to your own thoughts or to be entertained through your AirHead. As such, It was later than he’d hoped, not helped by fumbling cold hands at the clipping stations, and desperately trying to avoid the suspicious questions by the HyXyPhlo operators as to why he was out so late and in such a rush. Other than these distractions, and not being one to waste a moment, Alex used this down time to plan his interrogation of the visitor.

Now that he had finally arrived, somewhat clandestine at this time of night, his heart began to pound again, confirmed by an elevated HR blip warning on his AirHead. Despite the delay, Alex took a moment or two to lower his excitable energy, to both set his own expectations and not come across as manic, and approached the trap-door calmly. The visor minimized his route map by saying “You’ve arrived, 10 minutes after estimated”. Somewhere in the back of his mind, buried beneath excitement and a focus on the present, a flag went up concerning the time; he ignored it. 

Alex’s final glide was done with practiced impassivity. He wanted to look like he’d often been here, beneath this particular leaf-house, and that his navigation through this section of the cables was habitual. His Airhead’s design of patchwork orange and browns could have passed for camouflage against a sunset palette, however it was too dark for that now, night was Alex’s most effective cover. 

With one last transition of the auto-clips, he was dangling beneath the door to the leaf-house. The very leaf-house Alex had identified as being the home to their mysterious and foreboding visitor earlier that evening.

He paused, realising a conundrum; If this man knew Alex’s father had been arrested, just after he landed on their platform, he might not answer Alex’s questions for fear of his own safety. But equally, if Alex kept the reason for his visit to himself, it would be difficult to explain why he’d come all this way. He could say he’s here to ask the man not to come round again but Alex doesn’t know why he was here in the first place, and that wouldn’t create a positive atmosphere conducive to receiving answers to questions. Perhaps he should be straight up, explain the arrest and accuse the visitor, his reaction would give Alex some information to act on at the very least. Alex didn’t even have much assuredness that this was indeed the man he was after, just a brief glimpse and a trawl through the public network by way of an ‘investigation’.

Settling on the ‘straight up approach’, Alex moved upwards to the door in a gesture that was too overly casual and that he made a mental note to feel awkward about later. He tapped the access pad besides the trap door. Cold confusion rushed over his skin in a feeling that he imagined a flight suit losing power would feel like; The pad didn’t respond. Not that it responded with a red access denied symbol, or do not disturb warning or anything remotely expected, but that it was simply an inert panel of glass and metal, with no energy in it at all. This was a rare, disturbing sight. 

All leaf-houses had fail-safes when powered down. In the instance of an emergency the house can power-down, leaving all access ports sealed but unlocked. This way nobody can accidentally be trapped in if they have an accident or simply forget to maintain energy flow. It only really happens when there’s a branch wide renovation leaving houses empty for a while or if the occupier has unexpectedly died. All the other leaves on this branch had a soft glow to them, so Alex was forced to assume the latter had befallen the mysterious visitor. 

There was however another time when energy is completely cut, and that’s during a full scale raid by the elite police force Yellow Jackets. Only they had the controls to freeze energy assets flowing into a house. If the person under-investigation was unprepared, they’d be caught without a chance to recharge their suit and escape, or resist by electromagnetically locking their doors.

Finally making his way inside, Alex climbed the recessed ladder of the trap door hatch, briefly peered into a dark room and quickly entered, sealing the door behind him. The rooms were ghostly dark, space-black with moon lit glass and plasteel beaming across in spectral flickers, exacerbated by the light correction of his AirHead helping him see. Although anybody watching the house would have seen him enter, he was still nervous to use his head torches.

The space was only slightly alien to him as all leaves are built to the same specification; only the personal touches were different, and in an effort to find clues, Alex tried his best to determine what details seemed expected and which seemed out of place. The uncanny similarity to his own home began to gnaw at Alex, making him feel more disturbed than he would have if he were in a completely unfamiliar place. He felt comfortable, but out of place. Just as his mind was beginning to re-orientate itself to the space using familiar sights as mental anchors, an unexpected detail would jar him back into uncertainty. Broad shapes and spaces, the distance between the walls and furniture were all the same, but the details of decoration were unfamiliar, it could have been his own home at a different point in time. 

The room was untidy, that much was obvious. Furnishings were in disarray and various items lay strewn across the floor. There wasn’t anything that Alex could really identify as concerning as he desperately scanned for clues. It struck Alex, for possibly the first time in his entire life, just how much of a leaf-house was dependent on the energy flowing into it. It was quite literally dead without it. The basics like food and water were reliant on digital dispensaries, that was obviously taken for granted, but a stronger impact on Alex was made by the absence of life in the leaf-house, family pictures, the stats they lived by, the entertainment consumed etc. all needed the precious flow of energy to survive; the leaf had lost its personality.

With nothing to show for his searching, Alex accepted he didn’t know what he was looking for. He felt that this should put him at ease, if he doesn’t know what happened, he can’t be worried. But the opposite effect was true, the uncertainty coupled with the mausoleum atmosphere, filled his stomach with a sense of dread. Alex looked over to the bedroom door, any personal clues that could survive without energy, would be in there. 

A loud scraping of metal on metal screeched through Alex’s ears, eviscerating the silence. Sliding the door back took a lot of effort and another realization was made into just how assisted living in a house full of energy is. Alex placed a tentative footstep over the threshold, and then forced himself to step fully into the bedroom, frantically scanning the room to see as much as he could, as quickly as he could whilst also being scared of what he might see. 

Alex was again struck with an uncanny feeling that he was back in his own bedroom, or peering into the bedroom of his future, grey and cold with neglect. In an effort to shake the feeling, Alex crossed over to the slightly ajar wardrobe doors. Any light he could see by in the bedroom hadn’t made its way into the wardrobe, resulting in a black so dark his eyes invented shapes in it, spilling out from where the doors refused to meet. 

Over-zealously, anticipating resistance from a de-powered door and in order to over-correct his own fear of what he might find, Alex yanked the wardrobe open. A black robed figure loomed over him, shooting hot fear through his body so powerful he felt he had been doused in boiling water. Alex quickly identified the assailant as being nothing more than a flight suit and a complex looking AirHead on a hanger and hook, that had been moved by Alex’s aggressive door handling. Despite this though, Alex still couldn’t look straight at it and with a sudden tug, pulled the items off of the hanger, letting them fall to the ground in a less than human like shape to stop it suddenly leaping into life. 

Looking at the floor, Alex is again hit by a bizarre feeling of prescience, as the AirHead and lifeless robe outline a fetal form huddled and flat on the ground. Or was Alex vulnerable to trickery by the lethal coupling of an adrenaline imagination and darkened vision. 

AirHeads, the personalized representation of a person and the medium with which they interact with the world outside their leaf-house, will be the best way to find out who this man was, or is. Becoming giddier with anticipation, Alex reached down to pick up the airhead, whilst pulling off his own. It was heavier than expected and a momentary disorientation overwhelmed him as he plunged himself into the darkness that had been kept somewhat at bay by the light correction augmentation of his visor. 

Alex stared into the stranger’s AirHead visor, bringing it to eye level as though to talk to it. When they were originally developed, generations ago for the first colonists, AirHeads maintained some semblance of a human face, a design based around the shape of eyes, mouth and nose to make them less impersonal when an entire population wore and interacted through them. Over time, the helmet designs became more and more abstract and obscure, to the point where now each and every airhead is a blank canvas for personal creativity. This one, however, was different, it included some of the old conventions, long red ovals stretching from the middle of the face to the ears that somewhat resemble eyes – a grey grill patterned half moon by way of a mouth and small white curls near the ears. Alex stared into it, trying to decipher some of the meaning in this custom design. It was impenetrable to him beyond the fact that it was different.

Turning it over slowly, he connected it with his suit and pulled it down on his head. A moment fell away into an expansive couple of seconds, filled with nothing but tense anticipation. As Alex stood on the precipice of expectation for a flicker of a second too long, he relinquished any reckoning that it would ever activate. A dud, left behind to gather dust. 

In that same instant, as though to personally defy Alex, the visor erupted in colour. The sensory onslaught forced his hands to the helmet ready to tear it off. He paused as his eyes began to adjust to the bombardment, and as he lowered his hands, Alex lost himself in a wholly unusual world following none of the conventions he’d experienced through his own visor. Alex’s blue and grey static overlays of information were nowhere to be seen, replaced instead with fluid orange purple and black shapes and an unfamiliar language. After a couple of minutes to look around, Alex’s attention fell on a small plant pot icon, with a single stemmed flower sprouting two leaves and an orange flower head of closed petals.

Looking at it in the way required to select it, a knack all AirHead wearers develop, he was presented with a complicated screen that looked to be requesting a specific series of inputs. Curiosity overcame Alex and he began to fill it out and after entering his family identifier, the screen changes again to send a beam of light across both of his eyes, the flower head opened up and then the whole icon disappeared. 

Silently and without warning, the floor beneath Alex disappeared, the midnight black rushing up to catch his falling body. Alex inhaled quickly forcing his hands out as his legs weakened, his body reacting before he was able to process what was happening. As suddenly as it happened he collided into an invisible metal floor, slipped on the floating flight robe, and landed face down on the invisible surface, staring through the many miles between him and the surface, levitating. It would have been a pretty sight were he not terrified.

Confused and panicked, stuck in a perpetually precarious position, Alex wrenched his head back against all instincts to look around. He was surrounded by thin orange lines and pulsating purple boxes. His senses drained of the simultaneously sharpening and dulling effect of adrenaline allowing him the realisation that he was still in the bedroom. Alex loudly exclaimed his surprise as he realised that this AirHead had x-ray augmentation. Alex could see through walls! Or at least it looked like he could. He was unable to tell if it was just a guess of what was beyond the walls, or actually showing him the world beyond. This was a power unheard of. 

Exactly how it worked he couldn’t fathom, but Alex didn’t have much time to enjoy his new found power, as through the wall he saw four Yellow Jackets flying towards the leaf in a threateningly calm rise and fall of short floating bursts from their boots. Even if it wasn’t what was truly happening behind the actually opaque wall, it brought Alex back to his senses and forced him to leave. Almost as though they knew they’d been spotted, energy flooded back into the house to lock the doors, illuminate and disorientate trespassers. Alex was trapped.

As a deep yellow-orange alert throbbed through the house, and the cerulean blue circle of the landing pad lit up. 4 yellow and orange caped men with yellow pointed helmets hovered in front of the panoramic window with only a faint humming sound. Without needing the landing pad, with a sinister and graceful glide, they approached the leaf’s window which slid open automatically to welcome them. 

Alex stumbled out of the bedroom as though to lessen his trespassing by not being in such a personal space. When confronted with the Yellow Jackets, AirHead to AirHead, he stood like prey in headlights unable to look away from their casually carried weaponry. Not one to make the same mistake twice, at least when it comes to physical injury, Alex froze, expecting to be swaddled in blackness as the police override removed his visor’s sight. Though this time was different as the new AirHead presented a message reading: “Countering police override”, and then suggested two routes leading out of the leaf exemplified by a ghostly figure running both routes, one in green, one in red. The green person ran to the trap door, whilst the red jumped through Yellow Jackets and onto the extending landing platform. An error annotation read “No jump boots found for flight”, discounting the red route as a viable option.

The yellow jackets spread slowly around the room approaching their target, guard lowered assuming the police override made Alex an easy target. Through his new visor, Alex could read lines of communication moving between the Yellow Jackets, though he was too nervous to process them. With great effort, Alex shook himself free of fear, sprinted forward and slid on his side towards the trap door, exactly copying the green ghost image on his visor and visibly startling the Yellow Jackets who recoiled in surprise. With the energy returned to the leaf, the automatic clip of the travel cables caught Alex as he fell through the trap-door which slid open with a hiss to mock the Yellow Jackets. 

After a few minutes of swinging frantically from side to side, navigating quickly but aimlessly down through the ziplines with the aim of putting plenty of distance between himself and the Yellow Jackets, Alex allowed himself a breath to calm down and feel safe. He looked around the AirHead’s visor with bewildered curiosity, trying to glean a clue or series of menus that might help him understand what he was wearing. Before he could explore the interface, a knot tightened in his stomach almost before he recognised the reason. A tinny hum of the Yellow Jackets repulsor boots came up rapidly behind him, stopping him from focusing on anything else. A cold thud punched into his shoulder, his back and then his thighs, followed by the stiffening of muscles and suit as energy darts sapped his body and suits energy. 

His AirHead stuttered and went blank, leaving him trapped in much the same way he was when his Dad was arrested, though in a much more precarious situation. A sharp slap to his arms and legs snapped them to his side as he became bound tight by a whip cord. Like a Caterpillar’s chrysalis, Alex clung to his cable helplessly dangling. Without the AirHead’s oxygen flow or the energy cells providing a barrier of warmth, shivvers violently shuddered through his body and himself felt himself losing consciousness. 

His final thoughts were of self-admonishment. A rash attitude resulted in nothing but a new toy to play with and a whole lot of trouble with the law. They’ll probably take the AirHead as evidence. This will cost a lot of energy and pride to get out of this mess. Alex spoke aloud, though struggling to hear his own voice, “Leaving the family like that, for my own glorification, and ending up here, impotently crawling the underside of a leaf, easily captured and unable to move like a dead insect. Stupid.” Thinking internally where thoughts flowed more easily than speech, he continued. “It was purely selfish, just something to spice up my own life, a thinly veiled act of selfishness beneath a veneer of altruism for others, to try and ‘help’ the family.” 

As these thoughts flushed out any excitement he’d felt throughout the evening, they left behind a gut-punching realisation. He’d missed the deadline to apply for the pioneers programme. As though to spare himself of facing that thought head on, he acquiesced to unconsciousness.


	4. Breaking New Ground #4 – 0104. Looking Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex gets an offer, with a cost.

Alex blinked his bedroom into existence and took a few seconds to double check his surroundings, comforted by their familiarity. A feeling of exhaustion weighed him back into his bed, keeping his body occupied whilst his mind puzzled through the evening’s events. The clouds through his skylight were a blistering white, far too bright for Alex to look at directly. His bed was gratefully accepted by his weary body but also seemed at once too stiff and too soft to let Alex get comfortable enough to fall back to sleep. He put this down to his aching body struggling against being apprehended. Energy sappers took their toll, and struggled to differentiate between the body’s and the suit’s energy. 

Alex’s mum entered with an unfortunately familiar expression, frustration. 

“Where did you end up last night Alex?” his mother asked through a clenched jaw. It immediately struck Alex just how significant a breach of trust it was. The usual process for their arguments was an immediate shouting match of rights and wrongs, followed by a few snide remarks and a period of silence. It never began with concerned questioning, and that immediately disarmed Alex.

“Mum”, Alex began, hoping to reinforce either the authority hierarchy he’d breached or the maternal softness in his mother, hopefully both. “I just couldn’t stand around whilst they took Dad away for no reason”.

“I didn’t ask why you went, I asked where did you go?! I was worried!”, the loud reply came. The shouting was back and its familiarity was oddly comforting. Though her persistence was new. Usually this would have already devolved into an emotional tirade by the second sentence.

“Mum I don’t know, somewhere a few branches below us, I just tried to follow the weird man that saw Dad and ended up at some random abandoned house”, Alex tried to make it seem like a fruitless errand, to switch his mother’s perception of his dangerous and rebellious impulse into a childish waste of effort, though he knew it was both.

“Why Alex! What has that man got to do with you!?”, ah now this was more like it, this was an argument he could navigate, fight fire with fire and we’ll both burn out. It will be a short argument.

Matching the tone, Alex replied “With me!? Why don’t you ask Dad. Clearly something’s going on otherwise the police wouldn’t have dragged Dad away!”

“So you ran off, in the middle of the night, with no plan, for no reason? Surely you had an idea of who he was?” her voice, calmer now though still very irritable and grating. Perhaps Alex overestimated his mother’s aggression, but he knew when to press an advantage.

“It’s better than sitting around here and waiting god-knows how long. At least I wanted to do something about it”, the final line, carrying an accusatory tone, would ignite the remaining embers or douse the flames entirely. Surprisingly, it did neither and she sighed.

“Your father’s back already, and would probably like a word”. A statement that worried Alex greatly. She left and the door snapped back open as quickly as it closed. 

Unblinkingly Alex watched his dad enter and sit on the edge of his bed. It would be a long, emotional conversation. One that Alex would just have to agree with so that it wouldn’t drag out into a long lecture about life. Knowing it would be an attempt in vain, but the only chance he’d get to control the conversation, Alex began a subtle offensive:

“Who was that man who came by?”, the question was met with a quick piercing look.

“Don’t start Alex. Why did you leave your Mum last night?” The guilt offensive was a familiar, but no less effective, opener preferred by Alex’s Dad. 

“I was trying to help you!” Alex protested

“How’s that then?” 

“Well I wanted to find out who the man was and get some idea of why you were taken when you’ve done nothing wrong!” His Dad’s calmness wasn’t a usual strategy, and Alex could feel himself starting to dig a hole he’d struggle to climb back out of.

“Haven’t I?” 

“No, I don’t think so. Have you?” This was odd but a welcomed difference from admonishment. 

“Everyone’s done something wrong Alex, it just takes a keen eye to see what it is”, this was cryptic but not an entirely departure from his Dad’s philosophical waxing.

Alex was feeling confident he was clearing the woods, “Well you can’t have done anything that bad, you’re back now”, and almost sensing Alex’s growing comfort, his Dad re-doubled his efforts.

“That does not justify your actions last night, all isn’t well that ends well Alex”, rising to a near shout towards the end, unlike his mother, Alex knew that fighting his dad’s fire with his own was like trying to starve a volcano of its fuel with a match. 

“No, sorry, it was selfish really” the words choked Alex, but he knew it was par for the course to say them, and saying them sooner ended the conversation sooner. It looked to do the trick, as Alex’s dad betrayed a slight smile, and nodded. 

“So tell me about this new helmet, it’s a bit broken?” a welcomed change of conversation, Alex jumped at the opportunity. Typically a departure from the lecture was only a brief respite to settle tempers in preparation for round two, which was a reinforcement of the warnings disguised as a compromise, but much like the apology, the sooner you got through it the sooner you were left alone. So Alex corrected his dad excitedly:

“No it’s not! It’s amazing! I don’t know who your friend is, but his AirHead let’s you see through walls”

“What do you mean?” his dad asked simply

“I mean, you put it on and all walls disappear, well, not entirely they still glow which I think is showing you the actual flow of energy, no idea how though, but yeah, I could see the police approaching through the walls” Alex said, stumbling over his words in excitement

“Interesting, and was that always the case, or could you see normally too?”, a good question that Alex was happy to answer.

“No, well not straight away, there was an little plant sign-in icon thing i’ve never seen before, I put our family details in there and it then did the crazy xray stuff”

“I see, what details were they?” 

“What do you mean? Just our family details, try it on” Alex took a quick look around the room for the AirHead, but couldn’t see it. He scanned around the room again, quicker this time. “Shit where is it?” Alex said in desperation looking at his dad, who looked back emotionless.

With a dizzying lurch that wrenched at Alex’s guts, hid dad, the bed, the sky and the walls dissolved around him, revealing a white metal mesh cage. His whole bedroom faded away like water evaporating. It was an uncanny moment that left a taste of sickness in his mouth and thumping hot nausea in his chest. 

Alex’s Dad was replaced by an expressionless mask of white ripples, moving up and down across the curvature of the headgear. These milky ripples had faint signs of facial features, as though somebody was pressing their face against the inside of the helmet. Two pale hands reached up to the helmet and slid it off, like a snake shedding its skin, to reveal an even paler face wearing a crestfallen expression. Alex was scared, and even though there was no actual temperature change in the room, he was shivering. Stranger still was the voice that came from the thin grey lines of a mouth, a hollow quiet tone that was somehow always lowering in tone, perfectly matching the man’s grey eyes and short grey hair.

“Alex, I apologise for the subterfuge. I know it’s uncomfortable the first time you experience an interrogation. I’m the YellowJacket Chief Sheriff for this level of the tree. It was simply part of procedure and now that the questions have been asked we can stop the theatrics”

Unable to respond Alex simply stared at the gaunt man.

“I see. Well Alex, simply put. We have evidence to suggest your father and some associates are working to prevent the launch of the next seed rocket”

Alex replied in a burst of confused breaths: “What, no, what?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. But as I said, it’s evidence suggesting, not proving. And I’m not in the habit of wasting energy to build cases against innocent people”.

With fear somewhat abating as the pale man spoke some semblance of fairness, Alex responded with a slightly shaky voice “So you’ll let him go?”

“I want to Alex, I do. But the conditions of his bail are quite restrictive for charges like this, it is tantamount to treason, don’t forget. We’re not being draconian here”.

“But he’s not done anything?” Although Alex had no reason to think his Dad had done anything wrong, he wasn’t kidding himself into thinking he knew everything about his parents. As such, this protest came out as a question.

“Sure. We’re very worried that there are some people dragging your dad into some shady business, it’s not his fault”, came a stoney placating tone, “And I think we can get him out and send him home with you”.

Alex’s nervousness began to settle into a steady resolve as he heard of a way to free both himself and his father. “How?” he said eagerly.

“You’re familiar with the concept of ‘bail’ I’m sure, I mentioned it a moment ago?”

“Sure, how much energy will it take? Take my reserves”

“Wait now, not all bail is paid with energy. Any exchange can work at the sheriff’s discretion. To free your dad, and to make sure he doesn’t end back here. We need to make sure there isn’t, as you say, anything going on. Make sense?”

“Sure”

“Excellent. We’re keeping an eye on his comings and goings from your house, to prove he’s not interacting with any other suspects. But of course we don’t know what’s happening inside, I can’t prove his innocence when he’s at home. Are you following?”

“Well yes but…” Alex was interrupted

“Great, so what I need is for you to keep an ear out for your Dad’s communication at home, keep a note of any raised voices, any distressing conversations. Note it down and give us an update at the end of each day, just a brief call on your AirHead would be perfect”

With a raised eyebrow, Alex replies somewhat incredulously: “What? I can’t snoop around and spy on him!” 

The grey man, now almost completely translucent, replied with the faint shimmer of a smile “No Alex of course not, you’re not spying. Gathering information for a person’s defense is a very typical part of the justice process. Think of it as your way to protect your family. As we said, your Dad could be in danger and scared to come to us for fear of what might happen to his family, to his two sons. With you helping us, you’re helping him stay safe. Ask yourself, did he look comfortable when he was visited last night?”

“Well, no not really” Alex admitted

“Okay good, see that’s usable, clearly he didn’t want to see that man, this is already helping us” the man stood up on two short skinny legs, not much taller now than he was when he was sat down. “Look, we don’t expect you to expend this energy without something for yourself. Help us to prove your dad’s case and we’ll fast track your Pioneer’s Programme application. I believe your little adventure last night has prevented you from submitting yourself to be considered as one of the next off-worlder?” an edge had creeped into the sheriff’s voice reminding Alex that he wasn’t in a position to bargain and to not try.

Alex was left alone to change out of his police issue cell clothes and back into his flight suit. He was being watched on large screens by the Sheriff who sat with his hands clasped together over his knees as he leaned forward, as though studying a zoo exhibit. The room is octagonal with huge screens on each segment, showing the inside of each cell. Only one or two have anything other than the blank white meshed walls, and they show two very different scenes, no doubt in preparation for interrogations. Four desks face outwards at which are sat YellowJacket operatives changing various controls to refine the scenes they’re building. 

One approaches the Sheriff, and despite being much taller and standing, seemed to shrink besides the Sheriff.

“High Sheriff Sylvan, Sir? Will he help us?”

“He will help us. He’s naive and addled with life’s choices, easily controlled.” Then after a pause, he looked at his subordinate, “Did you hack the AirHead?”

“We bugged his Airhead, and included a quick dial option to your office as requested Sir”.

“But you failed to hack the other AirHead, the one he claimed did something special?” Sylvan said with a tinge of disappointment.

“Sir?”

“Don’t try to skirt around me, Lieutenant, I asked ‘Did you hack the AirHead’ and you replied with arrest procedure changes made to an AirHead, that isn’t what I asked and so means you failed but don’t want to or simply can’t admit it”. 

“Sorry Sir, correct. We deconstructed the code and whilst there are partitions in the software they appear empty, even when we entered his family details”.

“Not so difficult was it? Give the AirHead back to Wright-son. He’ll be eager to re-try it no doubt and we can see if we can monitor its effects then”.

“Sir”. Came the affirmative reply, and in a few moments, the AirHead was returned to Alex, as he was escorted out of his cell, and into a holding area, where his Dad waited without expression.

“Dad, look I”, Alex wanted to get the first word in. 

“Be quiet” his dad growled, and the two said nothing as they were escorted back to their leaf, tethered to YellowJacket officers and pulled from cable to cable on the ascent back to their leaf.


	5. Breaking New Ground #5 – 0105. Looking Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex goes shopping, meets some new people and wrestles with an ethical dilemma.

Breaking New Ground #5 - 0105 - Looking Out

It was an uncomfortable and quiet journey home. The YellowJacket officers seemed to resent transporting the newly freed, and the lack of tight control over his swinging was disconcerting to Alex. Alex had to assume it was also discomforting for his Dad because he couldn’t tell and communication between them was blocked. They were deposited back through the trapdoor in their leaf like two old bags of clothes thrown into an attic, and they deflated as such. It was dark, the ‘night’ Alex had spent in a cell had actually only been a couple of hours, and so he didn’t feel rested at all. 

Alex wasn’t sure if his Dad knew about the second AirHead he’d found in the visitors house, or if he knew that he’d been allowed to keep it by the YellowJackets. It wasn’t unheard of for people to have 2 AirHeads, but it was rare. Alex didn’t even know if his Dad knew he had made it all the way to the empty house. Alex was sure though that his Dad wouldn’t know of the deal proposed to him by the Sheriff. 

Alex didn’t know if he would help the Sheriff or not.

Confused in the face of too many unknowns to properly navigate a conversation, Alex took advantage of fatigued bodies, tired minds and a dark night, and unceremoniously slumped off to bed with his police issue holdall bag, trying to hold it innocuously so as to not betray the weight or shape of an extra AirHead. Let’s not start anything now, that’s tomorrow’s problem, he thought.

Collapsing onto his bed, a momentary thought shunts itself into his mind, concerned that this again could be a trick of the police, but he was too tired to care, and so pulled off his Airhead, socks and gloves, and slept. 

Hammer-like banging and a low humming of machines aggressively coaxed Alex out of sleep. For a few seconds his mind refused to accept consciousness, hoping that sleep would win against the noise, but the noise persisted and Alex twisted onto his back accepting his fate by pulling on his AirHead. The morning’s noises are commonplace, often serving as Alex’s alarm clock, jolting him awake anytime between six and seven. They have the simultaneous effect of making Alex feel anxious, like surprising loud noises would, and calming him, as they’re caused by his Dad’s preparation before heading out to work, indicating to Alex that there’s an emptier house.

The AirHead scans his retina for a fraction of a second and loads up his LifeView, a customisable sandbox of different information panels, Alex was fairly minimalist in his approach, but did have his most important panels always open. However the first thing he noticed was a yellow and black checkered banner running across the top above all other panels, ‘ _ Witness protocol in effect _ ’ and a timer counting down from 120 hrs, including a circular yellow and black telephone icon with ‘Sheriff's Office’, next to it. Alex was hoping for a few minutes of normality before facing reality, but this forced him to remember yesterday’s interrogation and accept that he was being tracked.

On autopilot, Alex reviewed his messages (upwards of 12 unread), energy balance sheets, latest news (both political and entertainment), popular content trends and lastly his to-do lists both personal and school related. As though he’d been punched in the chest, Alex leapt upwards and landed on his bedroom floor! Of course, the application! 

Banging his head against a wall of panic he rushed out of his bedroom still dressed in yesterday’s clothes and into a brightly lit family room. As though punishing him his AirHead took a few nano-seconds longer than it should have to dim the visor, forcing Alex to take the full morning glare of the powerful low rising sun. It was a Saturday, one of the last sunny days before the annual storm, so the windows were fully transparent to enjoy the last of the sun. 

His visor, recognising his proximity to his Mum, overlaid her face onto the image of her AirHead, the fact that she was clearly engrossed in some reading didn’t matter to Alex, as he immediately interrupted her morning calm and coffee. Alex did, however, feel some latent guilt for the argument he’d had, not with her, but rather at his understanding of her, as he was being interrogated, and so began a little more contrite than usual.

_ “Mum, sorry, the pioneer’s programme application, I think the deadline was yesterday!” _

With a look of concern, but certainly not matching Alex’s urgency, she replied:

_ “Can’t you send it anyway and just explain, maybe include the police arrest reference?” _

This took Alex off guard. He realised he hadn’t spoken to anyone about his arrest, the interrogation had confused his memory of what he had or hadn’t said, and to whom. Taking a mental step back, Alex went and sat next to his Mum. Apologising to his Dad was easy, it was the only way to end the argument, to re-establish the hierarchy and take the, usually proverbial, lumps. Apologising to his Mum, because it was usually genuine, was harder.

“ _ Look, Mum, I know I shouldn’t have left last night; I needed to go and find out what was happening, I just... _ ”

Not yet turning to face him, still seemingly engrossed in reading, his Mum interrupted, 

“ _ Did you find anything Alex? _ ”

_ “Well, I mean no, but what did you want me to do just sit around?!” _

It wasn’t clear if his Mum’s impassive face was a setting selected from her PersPro or if she was genuinely dis-interested. Either way, it prompted Alex’s accusatory tone, in an attempt to get a reaction so that he could diagnose his Mum’s response to last night’s antics. This was met with a sigh and a tut, barely audible through his AirHead. She turned to Alex, with a look of only slight concern:

_ “I’m just glad you’re back now and okay, if your Dad wants to get messed up in things leave him to it” _

Alex’s mind squirreled away the latter half of the sentence,  _ ‘messed up in things _ ’, he couldn’t give it any attention now. 

“ _ Okay Mum, thanks _ ”. Alex’s guilt prompted him to try and make it up to his Mum, by dropping their verbal ripostes, which was how the two usually communicated, and instead saying:

“ _ Do you mind giving me a hand with this application, if we can’t do it we’ll need to go into town, could have a scan around the shops whilst we’re there _ ”.

Either recognising his efforts or simply being persuaded his Mum attested, and seemed to brighten up a little, though again, this could have been a PersPro setting, it was difficult to tell. 

The pair worked on the application, pulling it up in a shared viewing window on their AirHeads; it was straightforward for the most part which compounded Alex’s guilt for not having done it sooner. It asked for the usual identity information and lots of personality type questions that his Mum kindly stayed quiet for as he made his choices, though he was sure she’d made a few comments under her breath with her commlink muted. He was sitting next to her after all, and the AirHeads couldn’t seal in every sound. The application didn’t request any lengthy personal or professional statements, instead requesting a link to his online portfolio (common place for all students to have their work accessible online). The remaining questions varied from logic puzzles to reasons for applying, and specifically requested quite short responses (as almost everything was completed via speech-to-text, the ancient convoluted language of forms, applications and legal documents had fallen out of fashion, as it takes too long to hear or speak).

The completion of the form was smooth and Alex was optimistic for his chances, until he was brought crashing back to earth upon submission.  _ “Error, deadline elapsed” _

“ _ Fuck _ ” Alex punctuated. “ _ Come on then let’s head into town _ ”

“ _ Sure, I need to grab some things for your Dad anyway _ ”

Alex quickly changed into a fresh flightsuit, and went to leave his room, before glancing back at the yellow and black holdall he’d been handed when released from the Sheriff’s. He zipped it open and took out the AirHead. Pausing for a minute to look back at his open door to hear for his Mum’s readiness, then quickly replaced his AirHead with the new one. 

Entirely driven by the curiosity of his new toy, but justified by his wish not to be monitored, Alex left his familiar mottled brown and orange AirHead in the bag and donned this new one. It went unremarked upon by his Mum either from being unaware due to the superimposition of his face on her visor or because she was deliberately avoiding talking about it. 

She activated their flight tether, a simple cable that linked their belts and an automatic override of his flight suit that mirrored her movements, so that they could travel together into town. It was a quick glide into the center of the tree, even with his Mum’s cautious flying, but it gave them enough time for some idle conversation, and Alex cautiously brought up the interrogation and the Sheriff’s request for information. Either diplomatically or simply disinterested, his Mum’s advice was to follow his own reasoning. He resolved to keep his eyes and ears open, but only reporting back to the Sheriff if he felt something was clearly warranted, as he wasn’t entirely convinced the Sheriff’s motives had his Dad’s interests at heart.

They touched down on the arrival plaza and Alex was released from the slightly embarrassingly adolescent tether. From the arrival plaza, a broad flat plain on which hundreds of people are landing and launching, they joined the spiraling travelator that moves them into the center of the circle and into the stem that joins the main trunk; like marbles circling a funnel and into a tube.

The commercial district encircles the tree and stretches up 30 or 40 floors and below even more. Security officers and workers flitted in flight between the floors as seen from the glass walkways and balconies, but they were the only people allowed to use flight suits inside the tree’s core, despite the general public being used to sheer drops and exposed heights and equipped with flight suits. Looking into the lateral distance from these balconies showed how massive the trunk of the tree was, only after kilometers of distance could the curve be noticed as the walkways bent into a tiny far off point. 

From the roots of the tree an expansive delivery network twisted and curved beneath the surface of the tree’s trunk, branches, leaves and up to the highest seed pods, rarely visible except for their final delivery point in each leaf. Utility workers were the only class to enjoy these decorative veins of orange energy, bluegreen pulses of water and mist-white oxygen tubes mingled with webs of purple and silver service cables. Everybody else settled for a view of the mostly grey-black monochrome monolith built of steel and solar panels.

The shopping plaza was the exception. In contrast to the structure’s general aesthetic, a cacophony of visuals began as customers moved into the interior. The travelator made for a captive audience forced to hear advertisements for the outer ring’s exclusive establishments. Health spas, high cuisine restaurants and luxury shops lined the outermost rings, positioned closer to the landing plazas for a more convenient experience and endless views of the planet. The adverts also served to give a healthy dose of an inferiority complex for most viewers, now eager to prove themselves by overspending. 

Skipping these exclusive concourses as most do, Alex and his Mum join the throngs of eager shoppers in the deeper concentric shopping rings. Layers of vibrant screens vie for attention in a gaudy assault of blues, pinks, yellows and reds; each screen is more invasive than the last as their attempts at getting you to look at them become more extreme, in both form and content. Vibrating and pulsating screens showcase new suit accessories on provocative models, other images jump from screen to screen to follow your gaze and force acknowledgement of the latest gendered fragrances. Overall it’s an assault of adverts and shop windows, flaunting so-called essential products, services and lifestyle choices available for high priced but assuredly good value expenditure of hard-earned energy. It was inebriating, and even the thriftiest fell prey and complied eventually. 

If a shopper somehow resisted the temptation to stop and browse, or give up and go home, and ventured into deeper rings, the scene changed again into muted beige tones, as displays swapped adverts for directions and information about the surrounding offices, administration units and perfunctory hotels. This was Alex’s target, to pass through unscathed and out into the administration district for the first order of business, his application. 

_ “It’s not far actually, but I think there’s a queue, says 30 min average time there _ ” Alex said pulling up directions to and information about the application center. Anytime somebody referred to a disembodied ‘other’ with a verb, ‘says’, ‘sent’, ‘shows’ etc. it always referred to the AirHead’s interfacing with the information networks.

_ “Well, you head there then, I’ll get the other bits done”  _ his Mum replied reasonably, though this did disappoint Alex, as he wanted to find out what she was doing, and what the errands were for his Dad. Unable to think of a reason to stick together, they separated and Alex linked his location beacon with his Mum, though this was not reciprocated.

Alex detoured through the entertainment district, his favourite. It was a silver lining to separating from his Mum as she always tried to steer him away from this plaza. Today though, Alex frustrated himself because he didn’t have time to take it all in and re-acquaint himself with the trends and fan favourites of VR games, experiential movies and holo-shows, glimpsing only the new releases. He needed to get this application off of his to-do list before he could allow himself any other distractions. That said, the advertising was pervasive, and Alex did glimpse something interesting. 

The way shopping in the plaza worked was different to the old format of physically collecting items and then purchasing them. Instead as you browsed you would curate a digital shopping ‘collection’, pay through your AirHead and race your items back to your Leaf. It made it easier for transporting whilst flying, and also made every purchase feel like a present, as the act of paying and receiving were separated. You could even add to your collection directly from the ads jumping out at you, removing the need to visit the store at all, and even browse the digital store from elsewhere on the plaza, never missing an opportunity to scratch the itch of consumerism even if you resisted it in the store itself. 

In fact, in extreme cases, ads would auto-add the product to your collection, so it wasn’t as simple as idly strolling through the vicinity of the stores, you needed to stay vigilant to what you were looking at and possibly even buying without knowing it. Though these items could be returned without cost and refunded straight away, it was just additional effort, for typically innocuous and inexpensive trinkets; they usually ended up in recycling tubes.

The interesting glimpse was the last shop Alex passed. Its windows were evangelising about a new entertainment product on the market. For someone that enjoyed staying up to date with technology, entertainment, and anything that proposed to blend the two, seeing a ‘brand new and innovative product’ on the market that he was unfamiliar with was unusual. 

The shop was a pet store, or rather modelled as one, with all manner of animals flying, running, jumping and even swinging around behind the glass. Names were displayed on Alex’s AirHead as he synced with the store’s advertising.  _ “A 100% unique and personal AirPet - always have your buddy at your side, as you look after them and watch them grow”,  _ He heard and read through his AirHead. Having personal animals fell out of fashion before this planet was even discovered, but it seemed there was a market for them again, though sanitised into 1’s and 0’s. Alex opened up a peripheral window and did a quick search for the product, minimizing the window for later reading. He pressed on more quickly in the hope to return sooner. 

Arriving at the Application Processing Center a strictly minimalist waiting room was full of people eagerly wanting to speak to a real person face to face who could help them navigate the twists and turns of society's labyrinthian bureaucracy. Alex wasn’t too frustrated with the process and his ticket was assigned to him as he entered the room which gave him priority over all those waiting online. Actually he was quite glad for a pause as it gave him an opportunity to read up on the ‘digital pets’. 

Yet, he couldn’t focus. He re-read sentences, getting distracted half way through and not understanding what he’d just read. 

The Sheriff’s questioning was on his mind, his and his Dad's arrest was on his mind, and the strange powers of this new AirHead were not only on his mind but constantly teasing him with its surreptitiously small sprouting plant pot icon. He could activate it now, see what it does...but decided against it. It was overwhelming enough in the dead of night in a quiet neighbourhood, he wasn't sure he'd cope in the middle of the day in a busy public space. 

His visor interrupted his internal debate with a summon to one of the consultation rooms.

The application resubmission process was humiliating. After being chastised for missing the deadline in the first place, he was made to complete the entire thing again without reference to the application he’d submitted previously. Before accepting the application, the processor, with an almost digitally bland voice, asked pointed questions about his family and lineage. He was forced to accept the apparently inherent inferiority of natural, unaltered lineages, and verbalise the folly of attempting to be a coloniser. Finally, and flatly, the submission failed again, even with the processor’s enhanced permissions, due to ‘investigative authority restrictions’ which had paused any formal activity for Alex’s family, a.k.a a police block. A knot formed in Alex’s stomach, if he wanted to progress, he’d have to acquiesce to the Sheriff's request.

Leaving frustrated, with the application suspended in limbo, Alex was accosted by adverts, tailored to his current mood and was unable to resist the large round eyes of a puppy that bounded towards him as he entered back into the entertainment district. Impulsively and with that familiar cocktail of frivolity’s guilt and buyer’s gratification, he bought his pet which was immediately delivered virtually to his ‘AirHead Ecosystem’. He opened up the new ‘companion’ options of the AirHead immediately but was swamped by acknowledgements and conditions to read through and sign; he’d had enough of forms for today and ignored them feeling hollow as he couldn’t yet experience his indulgent purchase. 

Dissatisfied with his retail therapy, Alex re-joined his Mum outside the AirHead store, a pilgrimage every shopper makes to see the latest unaffordable products in what resembles more like an art gallery than a shop. 

The two had a brief and evasive catch up, Alex avoiding the truth about his blocked application, instead saying it was fine, and in return not probing too much about his Mum’s errand running, though he noticed she did look rather subdued or tired, indicating she’d gone quite a distance. 

Typically, one joins the ‘audience’ for the daily unveiling of software updates and hardware tweaks, but Alex was no mere spectator today, instead having booked himself, or rather, his AirHead, in for a diagnostic. 

Removing one’s AirHead in public was unheard of, so much so that shopping for new ones, trying them on or having them repaired was done within private changing rooms with only the technician present, if necessary. Without having it confiscated, suspecting it to be a specific class’ tool, Alex wanted to know more about the special features of his newfound AirHead. The technician placed the airhead on the diagnostic dummy head and immediately frowned, took it off again, excused himself and left the changing room with it. Alex felt alone, exposed and nervous. He felt cut off, naked and noticed how quiet the shop was without the distant ads playing through his AirHead. 

A different technician returned, or possible the same person with a new AirHead returned, it was never possible to tell, and shoved the AirHead against Alex’s chest saying:

“ _ You shouldn’t bring this here, leave and be more careful; you’re lucky I was working today, the others wanted to report you _ ”.

Bewildered and embarrassed, Alex wanted to argue back and ask why, but the man had meanouvered Alex back out into the promenade, making a scene as though he was throwing him out for being unruly. 

As Alex put his AirHead back on, a line of text displayed from the stores’ general comms;  _ “The edits made to your Airhead software represent more than amature customizing and won’t be tolerated at any  _ _ official _ _ AirHead store. We thank you for your past custom, but will be unable to support this device henceforth” _

A snap landed at the back of Alex’s head, and though not painful, did surprise him enough to cause a sharp flinch forward. The calling card of his mother’s frustration, followed by comment through gritted teeth:

_ “What on Earth? Stop it, Stop it now” _ as Alex gesticulated to the shop indignantly. 

“ _ Mum no idea, I took my AirHead in for an upgrade and they threw me out!” _ Alex protested, though did in fact have some idea now he’d had a chance to think about it.

_ “You obviously said or did something Alex, they wouldn’t just throw out a paying customer. I don’t care what they did or you did, just calm down and let’s go _ ”.

This triggered something in the back of Alex’s mind...something that he read in the statement as he was thrown from the store…‘ _ not tolerated at any official store _ ’,  _ ‘ _ _ official _ ’. Alex thought...what about an unofficial store then? 

_ “Mum, I need to go to a repair shop before we go, I’ll meet you back at the landing plaza” _

_ “What, we’re supposed to be heading back now” _

_ “I’ll be quick sorry, you can hang on a minute or two” _

_ “No Alex we need to get going”  _ But Alex had already started to leave,

_ “I’ll catch you up” _

Alex bolted off, colours blurring into rainbows as ads leaped out and tried to keep up with Alex’s pace, music and conversations from shops jumped out and instantly died in a regular beat as he passed entrances. Within the AirHead he pinpointed the district of independent market stalls and shops and pressed on at a near sprint. The excitement of potentially finding out more about this mysterious device gave Alex a short term distraction from his dilemma of personal progression vs. familial betrayal. Any attempt to think about it just devolved into a vague moral argument. For now, running towards a shop to tinker with his probably innocuous AirHead felt appropriate, more manageable. 

Contrasting the vibrant tech district this promenade of sprawling market stalls and pop-up miscellaneous-junk sellers shops was much duller and dirtier visually; the colourful adverts and accompanying electronic music had gone instead replaced with numbers and statistics jumping out both on the visor and through the headphones; X kilograms of Y metal for Z energy credits, “We Buy Your Old Boost Boots!” and the like above every store and from all angles. There were also overlays on every product on display emphatically explaining that that product is the very best price you’ll find anywhere. 

However, like elsewhere in the shopping district, it was overwhelming. 

This volume of information was hindering Alex’s search for a low-key and morally ambiguous looking store with which he could discuss his Airhead. He was starting to panic knowing that his mum was waiting on him, and by extension, keeping his dad waiting. Compounding this time pressure was the increasingly dense stalls suffocating Alex’s movement as he struggled between stalls shoulder width apart. 

A shimmering holo-cover caught Alex’s eye as it flickered against a nonexistent breeze beneath a sign ‘Bespoke Diagnostics’. It was a little on the nose, but Alex didn’t have time to keep searching, and it was the first one he’d seen that specified anything beyond simply buying, refurbishing and reselling. 

Stepping over the threshold brought three thoughts screaming into Alex’s head. The first was the acknowledgement that this shop had an overwhelming smell of grease, sweat, fatty-foods and synth-smoke. The second was that he wasn’t sure who he expected to find and what he was going to ask them, and third, intrinsically linked to the first two, was how this was a big mistake and he didn’t want to be here. 

The shop was a maze of machinery, metal sheets and wiring reels stacked from floor to ceiling. Navigating through the shop it gradually changed into a factory of some sort, though what it was producing was unclear, and Alex needed to squeeze chest to chest as customers and employees moved around, giving him nothing more than casual glances. 

Alex wasn’t sure what he was looking for and whilst he wasn't consciously following his nose he did notice the dank musk’s intensity grew stronger as he moved deeper and towards what resembled an office. Pushing back the door, which took some effort as it was both un-powered and cluttered, revealed two men Alex would never forget. Well actually it revealed three men, but it tells you more about the other two that Alex didn’t even realise there was a third.

The first thing that struck Alex was that he could see their faces, unmediated, non-persproed faces; they weren’t wearing AirHeads at all and though there were two AirHeads on their desks, they looked like much older models. It made Alex feel uncomfortable that he was able to see their gaze as they casually but effectively surveyed him, not ending the conversation in progress with another patron, friend, employee (it was hard to tell which, possibly all three). Even with the translation and transcription options enabled Alex struggled to follow along as he waited nervously. They were speaking an odd mix of colloquial English, technical jargon and slang he didn’t know interspersed with in-jokes and references. 

The larger of the two was leant back in what Alex assumed must have been a reinforced chair, reclining behind a large desk of papers, pens, odd bits of unfamiliar electronic parts and other curiosities. He winked at Alex in a disarmingly assertive manner, acknowledging his presence but making it clear he was presently occupied. He was dressed in a huge beige shirt and denim shorts that Alex could probably fit into just one leg of. He was bald, though so were most people above the age of 25 in a society that wore helmets for all but sleeping hours.

Being the interruption, Alex waited in the door frame for half a minute, surveilling the room. It was either very small or just felt that way from the overwhelming size of the other two men. Alex wondered how on earth they travelled around the tree, settling on the idea that they probably didn’t bother at all, corroborated by their lack of AirHeads and suits.

The smaller man, though ‘ _ the slightly less massive _ ’ was probably a better way to describe him, was as small in confidence as he was large in body. Squatting on a hovering office chair that was split apart at the seams like a ruptured sausage casing, his arms and legs tucked tightly into himself with his back arched over an access terminal; he looked like he was caught in a difficult cycle of trying to hide his massive self, and in failing to do so redoubles his efforts whilst self-consciously pulling his shirt away from his skin as though trying to get some extra breathing room or stop the shirt irritating his skin, or both. 

Alex’s attention snapped back to the other one as he said;  _ “Now fuck off” _ , and planted his tree trunk feet down on the floor, rose slowly to his full height of 7 foot 1 inch and gently slapped his customer/employee/friend on the back. 

The behemoth loomed towards Alex and gestured towards the door as though they obviously needed to head through there, and it made Alex feel a bit stupid for not knowing that already. 

_ “Nah then muck, what’s tha-fter?” _

Confused, Alex began to mumble the words he’d prepared by way of an introduction, tripped over them as he spoke and instead heard himself asking what this place was, what work they did, why the man didn’t wear a helmet and what the issue was with his helmet all at the same time. It came out as a stuttering confused mess. 

Unphased, perhaps because the sound hadn’t yet travelled up to him, the goliath replied:

“ _ Orate ahkid, names Mark _ ” he said extending a huge hand

“ _ Alex _ ”, was all that could be mustered in reply, noting the surprisingly soft grip of the handshake. It seemed he was being ushered on a tour, but how this man was going to navigate the narrow corridors of his own wares Alex couldn’t tell. 

Either making an effort to use words Alex knew or Alex was starting to decipher the language, Alex heard: “ _ Tha buyin or selling like? _ ” as he stooped beneath a doorway opposite the office. Alex began to follow until he realised it was the toilets, then waited by the door, feeling like a puppy following its owner, and embarrassed about it.

“ _ Say again? _ ” Mark said raising his voice from the toilets, prompting Alex to continue talking, as though this was a natural way to do business. Alex found his sense when remembering that his mum was waiting for him.

_ “My AirHead, I was hoping somebody could take a look at it, it’s malfunctioning _ ”.

“ _ Aye, tha’s berra off _ ”

Alex paused, unsure what next. 

Returning from the toilets and wiping his hands across his chest leaving a wet hand smudge.

“ _ Gis it then, dunt tek two head like it i’nt Jamie’s missus _ ”.

Having taken off his helmet already today, something never normally done twice in a day, Alex felt strange being asked to take it off again, and hesitated. Mark didn’t push the subject, but simply went back into the office and collapsed into the chair which, miraculously, supported his weight, his head lolled back against the indecipherable wall sized display screen behind him and he seemed to drop off to sleep. 

All this took about 10 seconds, before Alex even managed to reply. So to hurry things along, and not sure what else to do, he took off his helmet. Alex felt the same feelings as 15 minutes earlier, but continued and placed the AirHead in front of Mark who lifted it without opening his eyes. He didn’t try to put it on, instead looked it over, peered through the neck opening and onto the visor, probed with a couple of tools instruments from his drawers, asked a few questions to his colleague (who Alex learned was the aforementioned Jamie). 

He threw it back to Alex. 

“ _ Nowt up wi’it, int yours though like, am pals wi chap who’it is. But nine tenths init. Did rate comin’ ere’ kid, be a rate faff at a proper store. Calm down it’s still rate, not dodge or owt, just ‘ad a tinker. T’be ‘onest only good Air’ed is a stripped un but these ‘acked uns are orate number twos, just lets thi sideload thi’own software _ ”

Bewildered by what he was hearing, and how it was being said, all Alex could manage in reply was  _ “Surely that’s illegal?” _

Mark let out a chuckle that shaked his whole body much like a baby’s first laugh that causes them to fall backwards.  _ “Fuckin’ rate, they bloody wish. Keep to thi sen yeah cos if they catch wind it’ll change. Called ‘the right to repair’, a sacred n ‘allowed law” _ Mark mimicked a catholic cross gesture “‘ _ ant gone away, big corps don’t like it, repairing code means you need to be able to add your own dunnit?, and it’s in this blurry line that these helmets operate” _

Alex was following along, and getting excited by what he was hearing,  _ “So it’s fine as it is then, it just allows for some extra code?” _

_ “Aye kid, but bloke who ‘ad tha before thi is sharp like. Probably quite a few tweaks like”  _ Mark answered, punctuated by another wink.

Emboldened Alex said: “ _ Yeah the x-ray vision” _ but immediately regretted divulging the information, he didn’t have evidence Mark knew the owner. 

_ “Int x-ray, but ah, there’s more am sure like just fiddle around wi’ it.” _

Alex was relieved that he wasn’t carrying some hugely illegal target on his head, but did want to be told more about what he could do with the AirHead, ‘fiddle’ with it felt a little anticlimactic.

“ _ Whose is this, are they going to come after it? _ ”

“ _ Fuck do ah look like John Soothsayer? _ ” followed by another chuckle, “ _ Doubt it like kid, he’ll ‘a’ fucked off some-wier, yours nah” _

Noticing Mark avoided Alex’s first half of the question, Alex dipped his toe in the water again. 

“ _ Whose is it then?” _

_ “Carlos Maddox” _

How irritating. The question was answered but Alex was none the wiser. Doubling up the irritation, Alex’s mum called through and was swiftly muted, and all calls momentarily blocked to pre-empt her next attempts.

Continuing Alex seemed to begin to adopt the hyper-local language: _ “Who’s that like” _

_ “Tha what? He’s a bloke like, fuck knows how do you answer that like? _ ”

Fair enough, Alex thought.  _ “Well, why’s he made this then” _

_ “Ah rate well yeah that’s the question init? Energy, credits, moolah, cash dosh and dollars. Call it thi likes, s’exchange that matters, ‘ow it moves not each stack. Don’t get me wrong like, tha nos? A rack of energy cells at ‘ome makes for an easy life like, but a yung’un like thee wants to make ruffle some feathers. You get this tha’s a smart lad. _

Alex didn’t ‘get this’. At all. But Mark continued.

_ “Brokerage, taxation, finders fees, all that. Trim a li’l bit off of everything, nobody notices a slither, nobody cares, in fact they want it, makes them feel they’ve earned it. That’s w’ere real money is now. But dunt’ matter really does it, gonna be dead and buried in a bit. Knowing where and how the energy flows, that’s where power lies.” _

In a move that didn’t seem as crass as it should have been, Mark opened up a lock box case of energy cells and the orange glow lit his half of the room. From the size of the case alone, assuming it was full, there was at least a year’s worth of his Dad’s wages in there. 

“ _ So ‘ere i’ve got a stack right, wat does it tell thi eh?” _

Alex shrugged.

_ “Thas rate ah-kid dunt tell thi owt. ‘Ow it got ‘ere, what am gonna do wi it, weer it’s guin, that's power. This ere _ ” he tapped Alex’s airhead, still on his desk “ _ shows you all that like, bloke that made it wa’ fuckin’ nuts, but sharp like, a talent. It’s not xray, it’s the flow of energy, society's structure itself.” _

Taking it in, Alex looked down at the AirHead. It looked the same, but he was now much more excited about it. Happy to have an attentive audience, Mark continued.

_ “Though let mi tell thi ‘bout this stack ‘ere. People luv antiques right, and I’ve got racks and racks o’ metal boxes, so I laser engrave some old earth logos on em, kick them around the yard for a bit to rough em up, and flog em for a bit of cash like”  _

A man with an AirHead fashioned like a bulldog, with a short stature and gruff bullet point talking style that was emphasised with coughs and throat clears interrupted Mark’s unpunctuated legato. Whilst Mark was occupied, the ball of flesh and dust for hair known as Jamie scoffed and swizzled round in his chair.

_ “And what, pray tell, doth thou intend with such a device good sir? It sounds useful perchance for one akin to accounting at a grand scale, something perhaps beyond one’s capacity if one may be so bold. Anti-tech luddites know not the usefulness of the latest gadgets and gizmos, buying into conspiratorial nonsense rather. I for one would don my AirHead were permission granted”  _

Though he knew the words, their use was far more confusing than Mark’s jury-rigged language. This childlike attempt at sounding important and educated whilst at the same time desperate to either differentiate himself from Mark or mock him, made Alex dislike Jamie. The hate didn’t fester too long when on cue, from the depths of the factory’s labyrinth, Mark’s voice carried into the office.

_ “Don’t listen to that fat lazy fuck, he’s too busy funnelling his wages into Sorcers and Sock Lovers Online or whatever its called. Fire up your AirHead and see how much he throws into that nonsense like”.  _

This made Alex jerk forward with a laugh, but stifled it so as to not offend the dislikeable but still giant colleague of Mark’s. The man Alex was with simply rolled his eyes and shrugged it off, pulled his t-shirt away from his chest and continued his work. 

As a respect for Mark’s conventions Alex pulled on his AirHead only once he was out of the factory. Alex logged into the sprouting plant pot icon but this time didn’t accidentally enable the ‘x-ray’ mode, (though he needed a new name for it now), so as to not overwhelm himself. 

Instead, he took a look around the interface more calmly than when he first looked, though this lasted for all of 5 seconds, before the missed call notification leaped into view. He’d been talking to Mark for much too long, and his mother’s patience had evaporated. 

Immediately his heart rate leaped and he broke into a run. He was automatically aided by the new features of the AirHead which guided him with optimum routes through ever changing levels of pedestrian density and timing of elevators and travel-ators, showing his path via a ghostly outline of the visitor, now known as Carlos. He was weaving through the levels and making great time but would still be very late and no doubt incur a bit of wrath, hopefully from just his mum, but quite possible from his father too. 

The AirHead prompted a new message in a thin grey text that Alex hadn’t seen before. ‘ _ Elevated heart-rate noticed, ‘Danger Sense’ enabled’ _ . 

  
  



End file.
